5.  The applicants, Ms Aleksandra Vinčić (“the first applicant”), Mr Damir Matić (“the second applicant”), Ms Dušica Obradović (“the third applicant”), Mr Aleksandar Kržić (“the fourth applicant”), Mr Ljubomir Božić (“the fifth applicant”), Mr Zoran Radonjić (“the sixth applicant”), Ms Ljiljana Savić (“the seventh applicant”), Ms Aleksandra Rosić (“the eighth applicant”), Mr Jovo Grbić (“the ninth applicant”), Mr Mirko Maljković (“the tenth applicant”), Mr Milan Vukelić (“the eleventh applicant”), Mr Jovan Milić (“the twelfth applicant”), Mr Jovan Jovanović (“the thirteenth applicant”), Mr Milutin Jovanović (“the fourteenth applicant”), Mr Nenad Jovanović (“the fifteenth applicant”), Mr Zoran Korica (“the sixteenth applicant”), Ms Dara Đorđević Halapir (“the seventeenth applicant”), Ms Vera Vasović (“the eighteenth applicant”), Mr Drago Tumbas (“the nineteenth applicant”), Mr Dobrivoje Dunjić (“the twentieth applicant”), Mr Svetozar Munćan (“the twenty-first applicant”), Mr Rade Savić (“the twenty-second applicant”), Mr Dragan Udović (“the twenty-third applicant”), Mr Milutin Milunov (“the twenty-fourth applicant”), Mr Predrag Stamenović (“the twenty-fifth applicant”), Mr Zoran Babić (“the twenty-sixth applicant”), Mr Slobodan Pejić (“the twenty-seventh applicant”), Mr Mirko Novaković (“the twenty-eighth applicant”), Mr Radoje Đukić (“the twenty-ninth applicant”), Mr Zoran Živković (“the thirtieth applicant”) and Mr Miodrag Lopičić (“the thirty-first applicant”) are all Serbian nationals.
6.  The facts, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
7.  The applicants were all members of the Independent Union of Aviation Engineers of Serbia (Samostalni sindikat inženjera vazduhoplovstva Srbije).
8.  Following a strike, on 28 November 2004 their union and their employer, JAT Airways, concluded an agreement whereby the latter accepted to pay all union members a certain benefit while the former promised to discontinue the strike and refrain from any legal action.
9.  On 29 November 2004 the Director General of JAT Airways, a public corporation founded by the respondent State, ordered that the necessary calculations be made and the payment of the benefit be effected immediately.
10.  Since this decision would appear not to have been implemented, on 7 February 2005 the applicants, as part of a group of 151 persons, filed a single civil claim against JAT Airways with the Fourth Municipal Court (Četvrti opštinski sud) in Belgrade, seeking payment of the benefit in question (ranging from several hundred up to approximately one thousand Euros, “EUR”, respectively).
11.  The total number of plaintiffs subsequently dropped to 140. The Fourth Municipal Court thereafter decided to separate the proceedings for each of the remaining plaintiffs, and ordered them to re-submit their individual claims. The plaintiffs, including the applicants, complied.
12.  Certain applicants were successful before the Fourth Municipal Court; others were not. However, all the applicants were unsuccessful at second-instance before the District Court in Belgrade whose decisions they received on the following dates:
- the first applicant on 27 September 2006;
- the second applicant on 13 July 2006;
- the third and fourth applicants on 13 September 2006;
- the fifth applicant on 17 November 2006;
- the sixth applicant on 10 November 2006;
- the seventh applicant on 4 December 2006;
- the eighth applicant on 5 December 2006;
- the ninth applicant on 28 November 2006;
- the tenth applicant on 14 December 2006;
- the eleventh applicant on 20 November 2006;
- the twelfth applicant on 8 December 2006;
- the thirteenth applicant on 7 December 2006;
- the fourteenth applicant on 21 December 2006;
- the fifteenth applicant on 21 August 2006;
- the sixteenth applicant on 26 December 2006;
- the seventeenth applicant on 7 February 2007;
- the eighteenth applicant on 5 January 2007;
- the nineteenth and twentieth applicants on 5 February 2007;
- the twenty-first and twenty-fifth applicants on 7 March 2007;
- the twenty-second applicant on 1 March 2007;
- the twenty-third applicant on 28 March 2007;
- the twenty-fourth applicant on 11 April 2007;
- the twenty-sixth applicant on 5 October 2007;
- the twenty-seventh applicant on 3 September 2007;
- the twenty-eighth applicant on 5 September 2007;
- the twenty-ninth applicant on 19 October 2007;
- the thirtieth applicant on 13 June 2007; and
- the thirty-first applicant on 3 September 2007.
13.  In its reasoning in the applicants' cases, the District Court held, inter alia, that the Director General of JAT Airways had not been authorised to grant payment of the benefit at issue in the absence of an explicit governmental authorisation.
14.  In another 23 separate cases, for the same reasons, the District Court also ruled against the plaintiffs.
15.  However, in at least 17 other judgments, rendered between 31 May 2006 and 5 December 2007, the District Court decided in favour of the applicants' colleagues, notwithstanding the fact that their claims were based on the same facts and concerned identical legal issues. In its reasoning in these other cases, the District Court explained, inter alia, that JAT Airways had had to comply with the agreement of 28 November 2004, as well as the decision of its Director General of 29 November 2004.
16.  On 27 September 2006 the District Court adopted a “legal opinion” (pravno shvatanje) affirming the reasoning described at paragraph 13 above.
17.  On 21 November 2006 the applicants filed a request urging the Fourth Municipal Court to proceed in accordance with Article 176 of the Civil Procedure Act 2004 (see paragraph 39 below), that is to seek guidance from the Supreme Court (Vrhovni sud Srbije) on how to deal with a large number of cases, including their own, wherein the District Court had already ruled inconsistently.
18.  On 27 February 2007 the Supreme Court rejected the Fourth Municipal Court's request made to this effect on 10 January 2007. In so doing, it noted, inter alia, that Article 176 was inapplicable because in a number of cases at issue the District Court had already ruled as the final instance, and stressed that it was up to the said court to harmonise its own case-law.
19.  On 17 July 2008 the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Srbije) rejected the motion for abstract review (inicijativa za ocenu zakonitosti) filed by JAT Airways, requesting to have the agreement of 28 November 2004 and the Director General's decision of 29 November 2004 declared unlawful. The court explained that it had no jurisdiction ratione materiae given that the impugned documents could not be qualified as general acts (opšti akti) within the meaning of Article 167 § 1 of the Constitution (see paragraph 24 below).
20.  In the meantime, JAT Airways lodged several separate counterclaims against the applicants, seeking that the said agreement and the Director General's decision be declared null and void. Ultimately, however, all of these claims would appear to have been rejected on various procedural grounds.
21.  Dozens of separate cases such as the applicants' seem to be still pending at first or second instance.